Masters of Scale

The AI boom in 2023 left Intel chasing rival Nvidia, whose chips — and shares — have been in high demand. Like other laggards amid this year’s AI mania, Intel is now fighting back, announcing the first-ever AI PC. Intel’s CEO Pat Gelsinger sits down with Rapid Response host Bob Safian to discuss how the company is working to re-establish itself — and sharing lessons for leaders everywhere about the long-term trajectory of the AI wave and how to practically position yourself to ride it...

What lessons can business leaders learn from the games industry? Elan Lee, co-founder of Exploding Kittens Inc., joins Reid Hoffman to discuss how Exploding Kittens became one of the most successful Kickstarter campaigns of all time. Elan shares how creativity and diverse expertise were essential for scaling a potential one-off success into a prolific games studio. And he reveals how he cultivated a community by transforming casual colleagues, partners and customers into key stakeholders...

There's no perfect process for achieving your goals. Accepting that the rules you play by need to be constantly tweaked, hacked or reinvented will open you up to new ways of innovating. Instilling this attitude throughout your organization will help you be boldly differential in your experimentation. Ed Catmull literally wrote the book on creating a dynamic and sustainable creative culture...

How do you restore confidence after a high-profile leadership uproar? Web Summit’s new CEO Katherine Maher joins Rapid Response host Bob Safian to discuss taking over after the sudden, forced resignation of founding CEO Paddy Cosgrave. With echoes of the drama at OpenAI, Maher describes how she navigated the tumult, calming partners like Amazon and Google and enabling Web Summit’s signature event in Lisbon to draw 70,000 attendees...

In the five years since Scott Harrison’s first appearance on Masters of Scale with Reid Hoffman, the nonprofit organization he founded, charity: water, has scaled 5 times over. In this episode, he and host Bob Safian reflect on that journey by revisiting some of the stories and lessons from his original episode, and Scott shares new lessons of scale he's learned since. Read a transcript of this episode: https://mastersofscale...

Often a small tweak, a rethink of a feature, is what helps your product break out of the pack. Just ask the founder of the Bumble dating app, Whitney Wolfe Herd. She rebounded from one dating app start-up (that you may have heard of) with a brilliant idea for a whole new way of connecting. Hear how the small tweaks along the way helped her move into huge new markets. With cameo appearances by Steve Spohn (AbleGamer) and Marissa Mayer (Google, Yahoo)...

In our attention economy, what does it take to capture the cultural zeitgeist? VaynerMedia’s Gary Vaynerchuk – or GaryVee – joins Rapid Response host Bob Safian to preach the need for widespread empathy and fearless leadership, and he uncovers the secrets to his new platform’s unconventional scale. Plus, Vaynerchuk shares why he is the only person at his company with firing privileges, and why your happiness is worth fighting for above all else...

What happens when you tap into the collective genius of a diverse group?  Does the cross-pollination of ideas let you create something greater than the sum of its parts? The real magic happens when you create a network of changemakers: people united by a common cause who will drive impact and innovation. Doing this will vastly improve your odds of forging groundbreaking solutions to the challenges you face...

Kick the conventional wisdom. In this episode of Rapid Response, Bethany McLean and Joe Nocera sit down with Bob Safian to discuss their book, The Big Fail: What the Pandemic Revealed About Who America Protects and Who It Leaves Behind. The pair faced blowback for their damning investigation of business leadership in the wake of COVID. They share how lockdowns may have miscalculated risk versus reward, the pros and cons of a market-based society, and the era’s parallels to the Enron debacle...

Are AI’s harshest critics causing irreversible harm to humanity? How far should leaders lean into AI? And just what would Reid sound like speaking Chinese with a British accent? Reid Hoffman sits down with CEO of WaitWhat and longtime friend Jeff Berman to tackle these pressing questions and more. Join them in an unguarded exploration of how the AI landscape has continued to shift in the six months since Reid published Impromptu, the book he co-authored with ChatGPT...